Metaverse Book Tours for a Southwestern Book Award Finalist

Very cool to see that our book was a finalist for the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards 

Thanks to Tolsun Books for figuring out how to combine Jia Oak Baker's photographs and my poems in convenient paperback form exactly how we envisioned but better.

 

Since all of my celebrations are virtual, here are a few more of those "Poetic Distancing Reading Series" video sessions that I did instead of whatever book tour I was planning before the pandemic.

I almost had to give up on this one in the canal because every take kept getting ruined by screeching jets from the nearby airbase. Another example of the Military Industrial Complex budget squashing local arts. I will edit together a bunch of these outtakes that feature me cursing at the sky as if those pilots might be able to hear me. 

My poems in this next video address Portlandian hipster-ness, 90s album covers, fleeting punk fashion statements, and my longtime appreciation of Chris Cornell. The shadows reminded me of a classic Soundgarden video, so I wore one of those shirts that former Phoenix skater (and longtime friend of Chris Cornell) Kevin Staab put out for his 90 skate company, since Chris often wore those, as seen in their video for Fell On Black Days:

Maybe a few other times.

 

Tour Diary: Portland DAY THREE mini Book Tour of the Pacific NorthWest

Monday was day 3 of my Pacific Northwest trip and I had big big plans.

I was scheduled to read at the monthly Northwest Renaissance/Striped Water Poets reading at Auburn Station Bistro (about 45 minutes outside of Seattle) thanks to the wonderful organizer and current City of Auburn Poet Laureate Marjorie Rommel. 

Since I had never visited Seattle, Sally K. Lehman (written about in my Day 2 blog post) generously offered to drive Jessica and me up in the morning so we could all have lunch in the Emerald City, then check out all of the stereotypical touristy stuff before my reading. I vowed to do it all. Throw some Pike's Place Halibut from the top of the Space Needle against the Gum Wall while listening to Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger. Nothing would be too touristy for me.

Unfortunately, we didn't take into account that the Seattle Seahawks were playing a rare Monday night football game that evening, so traffic was horrendous and the 3 hour drive took over 6 hours! I felt so guilty for dragging Sally and Jessica into this roadtrip gone wrong. Lucky for me, they are two of the kindest souls I have ever met so they never even complained once. We actually had a good time just telling stories and laughing the entire time as we inched past an Alpaca Farm and all of the other points of interest along the coagulated Interstate.

We finally made it into town with about 45 minutes to kill before hurrying to the Auburn reading, so we had a delicious bite from a local sandwich shop and popped into a Starbucks Roastery and Tasting Room that was next door like a Willy Wonka factory for caffeine.

I had some kind of Black Pepper Butterscotch latte, so I was ready to perform. But first we detoured to see the Fremont Bridge Troll on the way out of town.

I had to climb up his shoulder to show scale, but keep in mind that he has a VW Bug car under his hand. Washington poet Kelli Russell Agodon tells me that the VW is a time capsule, so that makes it even cooler.

There was a Star Wars urban legend that these port loading cranes were George Lucas' inspiration for the AT-ATs in Empire Strikes Back:

Upon reaching the Auburn Station Bistro in the nick of time, we were informed that the bistro had gone out of business the day before!!! But the owners agreed to come open the doors for us to do that final reading. I know what it's like to lose several of my most beloved venues in Phoenix, so I completely understood what these regulars were feeling. It was sad but also an honor to read at this final event and try to send it out on a positive note.

A few people were dressed up since it was the Halloween month edition of the event,
so this happened upon entering the room:

There's a poem in my book called "Kentucky Freud Chicken" so I told my friend that it was like having someone cosplay my poetry.

The open mic was emceed by the multi-talented and charismatic Emilie Rommel Shimkus 

I was proud to co-feature with Philip H. Red Eagle:

After the reading, Cindy M. Hutchings and I proved that AZ Cardinals and Seahawks fans can call a truce and peacefully coexist in the name of poetry.

musician interviews make great found poems

I'm excited to go see Chris Cornell play a solo acoustic show in a few days. His music may have been the soundtrack to my life, especially during all of those deleted scenes that no one will ever see.

Speaking of whom, I was playing around with some "found poems" for a recent reading and this first one was originally posted over at Mark Young's Fishbones Poetry Review, but I thought I would also post it here to include some background context.





No Different Than Putting Lyrics Over A Soft Song




So loud. Like a little kid
spreading aggression with a really big toy.
So loud all over. Stage lights
coming from God. Is noise the wrong word?
So constantly loud.

I’ve tried. I wish I could. But musically,
I don’t think I learned anything
from anyone else. Except
there is one similarity
between a little kid from Seattle
spreading aggression with a really big toy
and Mr. Jimi Hendrix: his parents
live in Seattle and so
do mine. But it’s so loud.

The audience is wet. The weather is awful.
Thunder and lightning. Just try
to make sounds people might not
hear the rest of the day.
The lightning was kind of cool.
But does it have to be so loud? Noise
is the perfect word.





This was "found" and manipulated from one of my all-time favorite television interviews with Chris Cornell, as Soundgarden left the stage at the 1992 PinkPop Festival in the Netherlands. Try to watch this exchange and not think of Spinal Tap.

Cornell is no stranger to found texts, by the way. Back when Soundgarden was recording it's major label debut, their bass player Hiro Yamamoto wrote lyrics for a song he wanted Cornell to sing, but when Cornell turned the page over, he found a note that Hiro's girlfriend had left him and decided that it would be much more interesting to sing that over the song. If you look at the liner notes for that Louder Than Love album, the girlfriend even got a songwriting credit out of it. Here's the song:

The other found poem that I read that night was from a J Mascis interview and I will also post that one, sooner or later.